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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. From the viewpoint of Roland Barthes, Eagleton argues that "reading is less like a _______ than a _________."
(a) "Laboratory; boudoir."
(b) "Boudoir; laboratory."
(c) "Boudoir; system."
(d) "Philosophy; laboratory."

2. According to Eagleton, what idea is "truly elitist" in literary studies?
(a) "The idea that literature can only be understood by writers of literature."
(b) "The idea that literature should not be read by those without a higher degree."
(c) "The idea that works of literature can only be appreciated by those with a particular sort of cultural breeding."
(d) "The idea that literature is the only way to understand a particular culture."

3. What is the name of the Russian formalist who published the pioneering essay that is the "beginnings of the transformation which has taken over literary theory in this century"?
(a) Leo Tolstoy.
(b) Fyodor Dostoevsky.
(c) Alexander Pushkin.
(d) Viktor Shklovsky.

4. According to Eagleton, the formalists were not out to define literature but they were out to define what?
(a) Inventiveness.
(b) Literariness.
(c) Criticism.
(d) Realism.

5. For Eagleton, E.D. Hirsch attempts to "offer a form of knowledge" that is what?
(a) Timeless.
(b) Temporary.
(c) Telling.
(d) Titular.

6. According to Eagleton, what kind of age do we live in, where "meaning, like everything else, is expected to be instantly consumable"?
(a) Modern.
(b) Traditional.
(c) Postmodern.
(d) Esoteric.

7. What three sequential stages does Eagleton point out in the development of modern literary theory?
(a) The preoccupation with the critic, the exclusive concern with the author, and a shift toward the text.
(b) The preoccupation with the reader, the exclusive concern with the text, and a shift toward the critic.
(c) The preoccupation with the text, the exclusive concern with the reader, and a shift toward the author.
(d) The preoccupation with the author, the exclusive concern with the text, and a shift toward the reader.

8. According to Eagleton, in the romantic aesthetic theory the meaning of the word literature became what?
(a) Psychology.
(b) Realism.
(c) Communism.
(d) Ideology.

9. According to Eagleton, Gibbon and the authors of Genesis share what in common?
(a) Both wrote fiction that is read as historical fact.
(b) Both wrote historical truth that is read as fiction.
(c) They both thought they were writing historical truth, but are read as fact by some and fiction by others.
(d) Both wrote fiction that is read as fact by some and fiction by others.

10. According to Eagleton, literature is definable "not according to whether it is fictional or "imaginative," because it uses language in ____ways."
(a) Pendantic.
(b) Profound.
(c) Peculiar.
(d) Pragmatic.

11. Who was glad to abandon the "feminine vagaries of literature" in favor of penning war propaganda?
(a) Matthew Arnold.
(b) Lord Byron.
(c) Walter Raleigh.
(d) George Gordon.

12. According to Eagleton, formalism is the application of what to the study of literature?
(a) Economics.
(b) Psychology.
(c) Linguistics.
(d) Sociology.

13. In the eighteenth-century, what was the whole body of writing in society considered, including philosophy, letters, history, poems, and essays?
(a) Canon.
(b) Theory.
(c) Literature.
(d) Religion.

14. During the last decades of the eighteenth-century, the word prosaic begins to acquire what a kind of connotation?
(a) A negative connotation.
(b) A positive connotation.
(c) A familiar connotation.
(d) A unfamiliar connotation.

15. According to Eagleton, the sentence "this is awfully squiggly handwriting" from Knut Hamsun's "Hunger" tells him its literary because of what reason?
(a) The context.
(b) The ideas.
(c) The facts.
(d) The content.

Short Answer Questions

1. What role does reception theory examine?

2. What kind of language does Eagleton say people think of literature as?

3. Who silenced the Russian formalists, according to Eagleton?

4. According to Eagleton, why did the Russian formalists NOT see a literary work as a vehicle for ideas, reflection of reality, or transcendental truth?

5. Who developed hermeneutics?

(see the answer keys)

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